


Interlude

by NightsMistress



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-10 18:52:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7857091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the fourth trial Hinata can't sleep, his thoughts all tangled up on themselves without any hope of his sorting them out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EvilMuffins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilMuffins/gifts).



> My thanks to my beta, prosodiical, for making this what it was.

It’s almost curfew and for all that Hajime thought that after the fourth trial he would just crash into bed and sleep forever, sleep is proving frustratingly elusive. He's jittery with residual adrenaline from the trial, and he has the strange, shivery feeling that seems to nip at his heels whenever he has the opportunity to think about his situation. The back of his neck prickles with the awareness that someone is watching him, which he rationalizes as it being Monokuma. However, Monokuma’s presence doesn’t explain how sometimes everything looks wrong. He feels like he could put his hand through solid objects as if they were as intangible as air.

If this was the first time he'd thought this, Hajime would chalk it up to a combination of hunger and fatigue. But he remembers feeling like this before. When he arrived at Hope’s Peak, after Usami told them they couldn't leave Jabberwock Island, the first trial — each time he'd been too overwhelmed by emotion that it was like his brain shut down and needed to be rebooted.

He doesn't remember having experiences like this before coming to Hope’s Peak — or, he supposes, since his memories tell him he came to Hope’s Peak — but his memories are unreliable. It's frightening knowing that there are gaps in his memory as those gaps could contain anything. They could contain any _one_. His thoughts go around and around in circles, and even after staring at the ceiling of his cottage for what feels like hours he feels like he can’t seem to catch the end of his thoughts and simply breathe.

So he leaves his too silent (too _ordinary_ ) cottage and goes for a walk to clear his head.

Jabberwock Island is very different at night, when everyone has returned to their cabins for the night. It's still and quiet, the only sound the crashing of waves on the shore. The silence is unsettling. He feels like the only person alive in the world, and he shivers. It's not murder he fears, he realizes, but instead being forgotten. Without anyone to recognize him as Hinata Hajime, is he anyone at all?

 _Stop being ridiculous,_ he tells himself. _There are people here who call me their friend._

There are no lights on in any of the other cottages, and besides, it’s too late to talk to the others now. His footsteps on the walkway leading to the hotel gate feel oppressively loud, the night air waiting in anticipation for his next footfall. Waiting for what, he doesn’t know, and by the time he is outside the hotel, he is almost running. 

Once outside the hotel he does run. He isn’t running to a place, but instead simply running away: away from the empty cabins of his dead classmates, away from a cottage that reflects the ordinariness that he suspects is inside him, away from thinking at all. He runs, and there’s no meaning to it, because he cannot escape their situation and his thoughts just go around and around without stopping until — 

— a familiar digital jingle rings out. He stops, arrested by the sound, panting raggedly to catch his breath and blinking back black spots in his vision. _Huh. I know that sound clip,_ he thinks. He’d played Gala Omega a lot before coming to Hope’s Peak, spending hours caught up in the deceptively simple gameplay. Hiding from … Hajime shakes his head. He had been hiding from something, but he can’t remember what it was. 

What’s important is that it’s late, and Nanami shouldn’t be out on her own. None of them should, really, not while the identity of the traitor is still unknown. Not to mention there’s the wildcard of Monokuma.

Hajime cocks his head and closes his eyes, trying to pinpoint where the sounds are coming from.  The beach, he thinks, which is a worrying prospect given Nanami’s propensity to sleep anywhere. The beach isn’t far from where he is, or from the hotel, so it shouldn’t take too long to get back once he finds out what she’s doing. It’s a short walk, and Hajime does it quickly.

Once at the beach he scans the shoreline for Nanami. He finds her sitting on the sand a short distance away from the video camera, legs stretched out in front of her and the incoming tide lapping at the soles of her shoes. She seems utterly absorbed in her game, which isn’t unusual. Hajime suspects that he would also spend all of his time honing his talent if he knew what it was.

His feet slip in the sand as he walks over to her. She doesn’t respond to his approach.

“Nanami! What are you doing out here?”

Hajime waits, used now to Nanami’s long silences. She finally raises one hand in greeting, her attention still firmly on the video game console she held in her hands. The soft beeps as she shoots down aliens in her game are as loud as the surf. Or maybe it’s that Hajime is listening more carefully for them. In the terrible stillness of Jabberwock Island, the sounds of her video game remind him that he is not alone.

“I was waiting for you,” she says.

“Waiting for me?” Hajime blinks, baffled, and shakes his head. “How… how could you know I was going to come here?”

“I didn't know. But I thought… that if you were going for a walk, you would come here.”

Hajime sighs, sitting down next to her on the sand. “Yeah. I guess so. You couldn’t sleep either? I suppose you wouldn’t, not after today.”

Over their late supper, there had been something lurking underneath Nanami’s smiles. That wasn't surprising; everyone was pretending to just be happy to be alive. Hinata remembers looking at Sonia’s fixed smile and resolving to spend some time with her in a few days time, once she had a chance to process everything that had happened. He had noticed Nanami sneaking glances at him, worry dark in her eyes, but hadn't known why.

She is looking at him with those worried eyes now as she places her gaming console on her knees.

“Are you all right?” she asks. “You look more hopeful now, but …”

 _Oh,_ Hajime thinks, with a flash of embarrassed realization, _It's about the Final Dead Room._ It's the only thing he can think of to justify this kind of reaction. At the time, he had thought entering the room was the only course of action available to him. Now, with food in his belly and Nanami looking at him under the moonlight, he understands how wretchedly idiotic it had been. She had been completely right to pull him away, and he feels sick that she had had to do that in the first place.

“I'm sorry,” he offers. “I wasn't thinking straight. I won't do it again.”

“You're important,” Nanami says emphatically. “You _matter_.”

It's such an incongruous thing to say, so unexpected, that Hajime laughs in spite of himself. Nanami huffs in indignation, her cheeks puffing out like a child throwing a temper tantrum.

“S-sorry,” he says once he regains control of himself. “I just didn't expect you to say that. But … I think I'm okay now.” 

“Good,” Nanami says, and smiles. Hajime likes the way that she smiles.  Nanami has a way of smiling that makes everyone around her feel better just from seeing it. Or at least, that’s how he feels, and he doubts that the others are any different. He wants her to smile at him like that more often.

“Having fun with your game?” he asks and feels awkward immediately afterward. Of course she is having fun playing her game, she’s the _Ultimate Gamer_. That’s what she does. 

“Yes,” Nanami says, reaching into her hoodie. She pulls out a second console which she offers to a nonplussed Hajime. “We can play together.”

He had thought that he couldn’t feel like playing a video game in a while, not after Monokuma made them all play a video game detailing a series of murders at Hope’s Peak. Now that he is confronted with the prospect of playing a game he’s uncomfortable, but that has more to do with his opponent than the game itself. Nanami is the best at video games and he wants her to think positively of him.

Still, she had brought a second console for him to play. That has to mean something, doesn’t it? He can feel his face go hot as he thinks, _maybe she likes me too?_ Not that now is really the time to consider these things, not when Monokuma is practically omniscient thanks to the video cameras.

“Uh … I don’t think you need to play against me to know you’ll win,” he points out.

“We’re not playing against each other,” Nanami says. “It’s co-op.”

“You really want to do this?” Hajime asks dubiously. Now that the initial thrill at being asked has worn off, he’s acutely aware of the difference in skill between them. He doesn’t expect to impress her, as he expects her to have to all the heavy lifting in their game.

Nanami doesn’t answer, instead reaching across to turn his console on and starting a joint session. Hajime is taken by surprise and consequently dies immediately. He respawns to try again. It takes him a few moments to adjust to the controls, a few embarrassing deaths to relearn the patterns. It has been a while since he had played Gala Omega. Then, in a strange moment, everything becomes easier, as if he had reached through obscuring fog and found a flashlight to guide his path.

His fingers dance across the buttons in response to what he sees on the screen. Nanami is far more nimble than he is, her spaceship flitting around his screen like she’s an ace from a mecha anime. However, Hajime is surprised to see that he’s not bad at the game either. Much better than he had expected. He wouldn’t say that he’s talented, not like Nanami is, but there’s a certain fluidity to his gameplay that suggests that this game was once really important to him.

It might just be that he had played the game a lot before he came to Hope’s Peak. But Hajime has a vague memory of playing this particular game on a sunlit bench out of the shadow of a oppressive tower, in the company of a girl he wants to be worthy of knowing. There’s something about the way that her hair falls around her face as she tilts her head to smile at him that is painfully familiar, but he cannot remember her face. He only remembers that her smile was a precious gift that he treasured, a bright spot in what feels like a very dark time in his life.

At the end of the stage, Hajime puts the console down on his knees and bites his lip.  “I think …” he says slowly, carefully, as if speaking too quickly or loudly will break the reverie. “I think that I used to play this game once.”

“That makes sense …” Nanami says. She smiles at him as she looks up from her console. “You’re very good, did you know?”

Hajime snorts derisively. “No, I’m not. I’ve just played it a lot.”

“That’s what it means to be good at something … I think.”

 _I wish you wouldn’t qualify your opinions like that,_ he thinks, but isn’t sure whether he is exasperated because Nanami lacks conviction here when she’s quite capable of it in a trial, or whether his exasperation masks an unexplored insecurity. Once again, Hajime wishes he could remember what his talent is, if only to put to rest these doubts.

“Let’s keep playing,” Nanami suggests.

They play the next three stages, and Hajime finds himself becoming absorbed in the game. It’s not to say that he isn’t still thinking about being trapped on Jabberwock Island, or that the events of the last few weeks haven’t mattered. Instead, he’s just able to put them aside for a few hours and focus on something different. 

He suspects that this was Nanami’s intention all along.

“Uh, Nanami…” he says at the end of the next stage. “Thanks. For this.”

“It’s okay,” she says. She smiles at him again, sweet and warm, and Hajime feels his breath catch at the sight of it. “Taking a break from everything is important too.”

“We should probably head back soon,” he says reluctantly. “There is a curfew.”

“Hmmm.”

It’s dark and quiet, with just the two of them out on the beach. Well, and Monokuma, of course, but that’s a given. Still, he feels peculiarly embarrassed to tell Nanami about what’s troubling him. It’s starting to unsettle him how unreal everything feels. Or at least, almost everything. His classmates seem real. Nanami seems real. 

Maybe it’s just him who isn’t real.

 _No, that’s stupid,_ Hajime tells himself. Of course he’s real. He leans back on his hands and looks up at the night sky. If there’s someone there watching him, they’re not saying anything. Nanami’s saying nothing, the console gone quiet in her hands as she stops pressing buttons.

“Hey, Nanami?” Hajime starts. He stops, laughs ruefully. “This is going to sound … weird. Really weird. But … do you think sometimes that things aren’t … _real_? Not about what’s been happening but …” He shrugs. “That things don’t look right. Or feel right. Or something. I don’t know.”

Her answer is a faint snore. Hajime looks across and down at her. She’s sagging to one side, and as he watches she leans on his shoulder, head lolling against his arm. It’s a nice feeling, having her be this close to him, even if it is pretty embarrassing. He supposes that’s the answer to his question: he’s too tired and wound up to think straight, and that’s why his perceptions are weird.

“I suppose not,” he says. He gently tugs her gaming console out of her slack fingers, puts it into sleep mode, and tucks it into one of the pockets of her hoodie.  “It was a stupid question anyway. Don’t worry about it.”

Nanami frowns in her sleep, the precursor to her pouting, and Hajime pushes her into an upright sitting position. “Come on, Nanami,” he says, helping her to stand. She protests sleepily, but once on her feet is mostly steady. She yawns, rubbing at her eyes.

“If we don’t get back soon, Monokuma’s going to appear out of nowhere and make some awful comment,” Hajime says.

“Hmm … maybe,” Nanami says. She yawns again, but to Hajime’s relief starts moving towards the road leading back to the hotel. He’s yawning too; speaking with Nanami has helped him to feel lighter, but also exposed the exhaustion that laid hidden underneath the nervous energy that had driven him forward. By the time they arrive back at the hotel he’s staggering with fatigue. Nanami is leaning on him as well.

“Good night, Hinata-kun,” Nanami says. She yawns, and Hajime yawns in reply.

“Good night, Nanami,” he says. 

They part ways and return to their respective cottages. It’s not until he’s inside his cottage, door shut, that he realises that there’s something in the pocket of his trousers. It’s the console that he had used before. Nanami must have slipped it into his pocket on the walk back, when he’d been distracted by how close she was to notice.

Hajime smiles at it and places it on the window sill to remind himself to return it to her tomorrow. It’s a sweet gesture, but he knows how much the console means to her. He thinks he can rest now, thanks to Nanami. 

“I really have to talk to her,” he says aloud once he’s back in bed, as if saying it aloud means that he will do it. As if saying it aloud to the ceiling of his room means that he will tell Nanami about the things he likes about her, that he likes _her_ and that he’d like to spend more time with her. He thinks about telling her what he feels about her when he returns her console to her, but he squirms at the prospect. If she says no, if he’s been reading the situation wrong, then the two of them are stuck on these islands together. It’d be far too awkward to confess his feelings, be rejected, and then force her to have to work with him to get out of Monokuma’s game.

Still, there is always another option. They will get out. He has to believe that. And when they do get out, then he can tell her. Nanami may fear that he’ll forget her once they escape, but he doesn’t think that’s possible. How could he possibly forget Nanami?

He’ll tell her then. When the world is open to them, he’ll tell her. 

“Once we get out of here, I’ll definitely do it.” It’s a promise he thinks he can keep. He closes his eyes to sleep, and resolving to bring about the day that they do escape.


End file.
